On the Other Side: Natalie Wiseman

I received my bachelors of art with emphasis in painting in 1991 from Missouri Southern. By 1995, the paintings were piling up and I began painting murals in area homes and businesses. I have only just recently started painting for myself again, and have tried to be more involved in what's going on with art locally. I have to thank Tricia Courtney at Rose Gallery for showing an interest in my recent work.

I was motivated to participate in Spiva's "On the Other Side" show because I had already begun work on the piece when I found out about the specifics. It was a natural response to the event, but I feel that area artists will be creatively impacted by the storm for years.

My piece, an acrylic titled, " Life in 3D" began as a pretty literal interpretation of the event. The items that I included were those that reveal a sense of vulnerability. No matter how personal the items, they were all scattered and blended then placed on display for the rest of the world. Some of the items included in the still life were directly related to things my family and I had seen in town. As I thought about the show's name, though, it made me think more of how clearly I remember the events of that day, leading up to the storm. Almost like a windowpane, the rough frame irepresents the " present" conditions through which we have to
look back through. My intention is to focus on that moment, day, hour directly before the storm that we cannot undo, we just have to examine.

I am for an art...masters program at Missouri Southern.

On the Other Side: Clayton Woolery

"A Scream of Questions"

I'm Clayton Woolery. I'm a high school junior currently studying in Washington, DC and I am fascinated by emotions and mental states. I incorporate this into my art. Joplin is my hometown and to not participate in this show at Spiva would be a huge disservice to my roots there. I was motivated to capture the moment as a visualization of the collective mind of the citizens the day it happened. My piece focuses on a rendering of "the minds eye." it is a found windowframe with two panes missing. All the materials are found and the concept of found poetry is practiced in the paper elements. My goal was to capture the emotional state that comes with disaster, a disbelief, an emptiness. I am for an art community that engages with the real world in a valid and relevant way. I believe that art is the point of existence and it is more powerful than tragedy. It is human.

Spiva's On the Other Side

Josie Mai
City of Joplin News Archive May 23-June 13th, 2011
cut paper and sticky-tak

This installation is composed of headlines from the following website: http://joplinmo.org/newsArchive.cfm
I hand-wrote the headlines onto an overhead transparency and projected them onto white roll paper and traced my own handwriting with pencil. I then cut out each line of text with scissors and affixed them to the wall. The bottom line represents the first news headline after the storm. The headlines are continuous and meant to be slightly illegible. They represent the media storm that followed the actual storm, a cacophony of meaningless words as we struggled to find relevant, essential information through the shockwaves. To me they are fragile, temporary, and an homage to information that we still can't comprehend.